Battle Of The Ports: Emirates sea power spreads from Persian Gulf to Africa

Friday August 3, 2018By Camille Lons

REUTERS/Ahmed Jadallah

The past few weeks have been particularly rich in new developments
for the UAE’s foreign policy. In Yemen, the UAE is at the forefront of
the current struggle for the seizure of the Houthi-held port of
Hodeidah, a critical chokepoint for the arms and humanitarian supplies
to the Houthis, and an important access to the Red Sea and strait of Bab
el Mandeb, where 4.8 million barrels of oil and 8 percent of global
trade transit every day.

On the other shore of the Red Sea, the
Emiratis have reportedly played a key role at facilitating the
rapprochement between 20-year rivals Eritrea and Ethiopia. On July 24, a
few weeks after the two countries signed a peace agreement, Abu Dhabi
hosted a tripartite summit with the two leaders, where it reaffirmed its
support to their peace efforts. For the UAE, the stabilisation of these
important partners could have strategic advantages, including for
reinforcing its already solid influence on Horn of Africa’s ports.
Indeed, Eritrea hosts the UAE’s first foreign military base in its port
of Assab since 2015, and reports suggest that landlocked Ethiopia plans
to use this port, possibly developed by Dubai Ports World, to diminish
its reliance on the port of Djibouti.

Finally, the UAE also
received last week the visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping, signing
agreements in multiple areas, including cooperation on the project of
Maritime Silk Road, given both countries growing footprint on regional
ports.

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These back-to-back developments mark further steps in the
UAE’s rapid maritime expansion in the Western Indian Ocean and suggest
the shaping of an increasingly sophisticated Emirati diplomacy directed
towards the achievement of its regional ambitions. This is playing out
against the backdrop of regional competition between Gulf states across
both the Gulf itself and the Horn of Africa, a competition also drawing
in others such Turkey and China. This competition to control strategic
ports and maritime routes represents a new, and potentially
destabilizing, arena for intensifying regional rivalries.

Towards the emergence of an Emirati maritime empire?

Building
on its long-standing presence in the Red Sea, the UAE has used the
state-owned DP World as a key commercial and diplomatic tool, allowing
it to multiply their commercial concessions and economic agreements with
the ports on the Horn of Africa. This has resulted in a string of UAE
controlled ports—running from Assab in Eritrea, to Djibouti, Berbera in
Somaliland, Bosaso in the Puntland, Barawe in Somalia and Kismayo in
southern Somalia. On the other side of the Red Sea, in southern and
western Yemen, the Emirati intervention against the Houthis and Al Qaida
has created an opening for the UAE to develop its influence in local
ports such as Mukalla, Bir’Ali, Balhaf, Aden, al-Mokha, and now Al
Hodeidah.

For a few years now, the UAE has also been using its presence in
foreign ports as a launching pad from which it can project its military
power into the region. Following the degradation of its relationship
with Djibouti, the UAE established its first foreign military base in
Eritrea’s port of Assab in 2015, which played a key role in enforcing
the coalition’s blockade of Yemen, and in coordinating the air strikes
against the Houthis in Yemen. The UAE is also developing a naval and air
base in Berbara (Somaliland), and tightening its military cooperation
with the Seychelles.

Emirati efforts have been focused mainly on
the ports of the Red Sea and Western Indian Ocean, which occupy a
strategic location at the crossroads of trade routes linking Europe,
Africa and Asia. As Iran threatens to put constraints on the access to
the Strait of Hormuz, maintaining security and freedom of navigation in
the Bab el Mandeb is crucial to the UAE. But maybe more importantly, the
UAE is eager to make itself a key component of the Chinese Belt and
Road Initiative (BRI), for which the Gulf and Indian Ocean are
strategic. At a time when Gulf countries are trying to diversify their
economies, Asian investments and positioning on global trade routes
represent important opportunities for the UAE’s post-oil economy.

The battle of ports at the center of Gulf rivalries

The
Emirati port of Jebel Ali provides a quarter of Dubai’s GDP and stands
today as the largest container port in the region, with a capacity that
has increased by a third since 2015, reaching around 20 million TEUs.
But if the UAE is currently the most proactive and rapidly expanding
maritime power in the region, it is not the only one, and other Gulf
countries have invested heavily in the development of their own ports
and logistical infrastructures.

The Saudi ports of King Abdullah and Jeddah are planning to almost
double their capacity over the coming years. A plan to connect these
ports on the Red Sea to the city of Dammam on the Persian Gulf through
new pipelines and rail networks would cut significantly trading routes,
given them a competitive edge. Oman too is trying to take advantage of
its strategic location on the Indian Ocean, which allows it to bypass
the Strait of Hormuz, by upgrading its ports in Sohar, Salalah, and
Duqm.

On the opposite shore of the Gulf, Iran is seeking to
attract Chinese and Indian investments for the development of its port
in Chabahar, which would be connected to Central Asia via railways. The
return of U.S. sanctions may however limit its ambitions. Finally,
Qatar, has brought forward the opening of its Hamad port to September
2017. While this primarily stems from the need to re-draw its trading
routes as a result of the UAE-Saudi instigated blockade against it, its
new port could also become a credible alternative to Jebel Ali.

But
control of ports is also an inherently political issue. The blockade of
Qatar has demonstrated how interdependency and connectivity can be used
as a tool for political pressure. Gulf countries are keenly aware of
this risk and are attempting to diversify and re-balance cross-border
and maritime trade routes. As mentioned above, Qatar has re-directed its
routes from Jebel Ali towards other regional ports such as Sohar in
Oman, and Shuwakin in Kuwait. It has also signed a transportation
partnership with Iran and Turkey to further help it bypass the blockade.

Yemeni fighters from the Amalqa ('Giants') Brigades,
loyal to the Saudi-backed government, gather with armed pick-up trucks
and armoured vehicles on the side of a road during the offensive to
seize the Red Sea port city of Hodeida from Iran-backed Huthi rebels, on
its southern outskirts near the airport on June 21, 2018. SALEH
AL-OBEIDI/AFP/Getty Images

Similarly,
Oman has framed the development of its ports in Sohar and Duqm, and
greater cooperation with Qatar, as a means of lessening its
vulnerability to mounting political pressure from Saudi Arabia and the
UAE over Muscat continued relationship with Iran. Even close allies such
as Saudi Arabia and the UAE are being prudent. Saudi investments in the
Omani port of Duqm and infrastructure projects boosting land
connections between the two territories—and circumventing the UAE—can be
seen as an attempt by Riyadh to decrease its reliance on the Emirati
ports, and loosen the latter’s monopoly on Gulf trading routes.

Intra-Gulf
competition over maritime trade routes is not solely confined to
domestic ports. In a similar fashion to the UAE, other regional powers
have also been developing their presence in ports and maritime choke
points doted across the region, using them as ways to build wider
influence. But as these powers expands outwards into the region, it is
geopolitics rather than pure economics that is becoming the dominant
driver.

The Horn of Africa and Red Sea especially have been
subject to heightened militarisation due to a complex game of regional
rivalries involving Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Turkey, Qatar, Iran and
Egypt. In addition to being important aid donors to the Horn of Africa,
these countries have sought to increase their military presence in the
Red Sea. Besides the Saudi base in Djibouti, and Emirati bases in
Eritrea and Somalia, Turkey is in the process of opening bases in
Mogadishu and in Suakin (Sudan), Iran is conducting anti-piracy
operations in the Red Sea, and there are rumours that Egypt is in talks
on a base in Eritrea.

Regional powers have also been playing on
internal eastern African tensions to counterbalance each other’s
influence. In Somalia for example, Ankara and Abu Dhabi are playing on
internal rivalries between the central government in Mogadishu and
Somali clans and federal states to increase their influence at the
expense of the other.

The international community fears that
Gulf-Turkey rivalries could have destabilising spill-over effects on an
already fragile region. The Europeans especially, who have high
strategic stakes in the Horn of Africa and depend heavily on the
maritime trade routes passing through the strait of Hormuz and Suez
Canal, see this regional power contest with a lot of concern. However,
the Eritrea-Ethiopia rapprochement suggest that the UAE is willing to
impose itself as a peace broker and stabilising power in the region.
Future developments will tell us whether connectivity and economic
dependency will play more as a factor of conflict or as a factor of
peace in the region—but they are already certain to confirm the Red Sea
and regional maritime routes as the new arenas for regional
contestation.

Camille Lons is a Programme Coordinator with the
Middle East and North Africa Programme at the European Council on
Foreign Relations.